Thursday, 18 April 2013

Sepia Saturday 173: Tauranga's waterfront a century ago

Sepia Saturday invites us this week to post those odd photographs in our collections which we've found difficult to identify, categorize or even understand. While not denying that I have several oddities in my own collection worthy of inclusion in my What were they thinking? category, I've chosen to use an image from the Tauranga Heritage Collection, where I've spent much of the last three weeks helping to photograph, research and document a large but jumbled collection of old cameras.

The pile of logs seemingly jettisoned on The Strand, more or less in the middle of town, had probably been offloaded from a boat at the wharf, just off to the left the photograph. Devonport Road is to the right, disappearing behind the double storey building which houses Cart & Co's clothing and footwear store. The dogs are doing what dogs always do, but quite why the photographer saw fit to save this snapshot from the dustbin, I can't really understand.

Google's Streetview (above) shows a landscape superficially different, although it's worth noting that general layout, at least in this view, is still much the same. None of the original stores are there. Telegraph poles have been replaced by nautically flavoured lamp posts (although I don't think many have swung from these yardarms in the recent past) and the roads and pavements have been sealed, concreted or bricked over. That particular palm tree is long gone, but there are many more in the vicinity, as panning to the left in the Streetview image above will reveal.

A short post from me this week, as I've been a little busy on other projects, but if you're hankering after more sepian oddballs, I'm sure the other participants will happily oblige.

39 comments:

The Blessing & Gift of Photography.As I Get Older I often Travel Through Areas That Are Unrecognizable From My Youth.Photography-as-Proof that we were not dreaming,nor is our Memory False! But Lord Knows "why" those dogs! Some things are best not remembered!

Funny how a strange old photo comes in handy...as you say why preserve the dog behaviour which is so typical? Perhaps they were his/her favourite pets? I do like the old-new contrast. I do think the old building is so much nicer.

The sepia photo is indeed odd, being without any particular subject. Maybe the photographer was saving it for instructional purposes..."how not to frame a photo" . Or maybe a reminder for himself to improve his focus and settle on one subject for the shot. Is Sawmiller somebody's name? Does the pile of logs relate to this? More and more oddness.

I always find that the subject-less photographs in our collection tend to be the most interesting from an historical perspective as, so often, the background becomes the foreground, the support becomes the star of the show.

Maybe it was their business and they wanted a shot. They didn't notice the dogs until afterwards. Similar to the way I often don't notice the glasses on the table until they appear so big in the final shot.

LOL! Those dogs were doing what dogs do. Out of the whole post the thing that made me laugh out loud was your last statement, "if you're hankering after more sepian oddballs, I'm sure the other participants will happily oblige." Truer words never spoken!